I have some drives of various sizes, 1TB, 2TB etc. I am currently working with a 2 TB drive. I place it in a powered external USB-3 drive enclosure. I can see it in lsblk as the correct size (as SDA) , but the disk manager does not see /dev/sda, and fdisk only wants to let me create a 5 GB partition.
If I dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=400K status=progress writes 5 GB and claims my 2 TB drive (In this case) is full.
Is there a way to reclaim this drive? Any information on the drive is unimportant.
Why do you say “drive(s)”? Is this or similar happening with more than one drive?
If the other drives are working fine, then you might already have your answer. If they’re not, it sounds like the enclosure.
If you think it’s drive, try putting it in the freezer for an hour to see if anything changes. It wouldn’t be a permanent fix but, if the problem temporarily goes away, it’ll make clear that the problem is the drive, possibly due to add solder joints.
Some drives work fine. Some fail. Some work fine then fail later. But it seems hitting them with gparted to create a single ext4 partition works, brining a 5gb drive back from that state and allowing writes if I write to the partition. If I try to zero the raw device it still fails at 5gb.
Have you checked SMART?
smartctl 7.3 2022-02-28 r5338 [x86_64-linux-6.2.0-24-generic] (local build) Copyright (C) 2002-22, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org === START OF INFORMATION SECTION === Model Family: Western Digital Green Device Model: WDC WD20EZRX-00D8PB0 Serial Number: WD-WMC4M1881301 LU WWN Device Id: 5 0014ee 6042454e9 Firmware Version: 80.00A80 User Capacity: 2,000,398,934,016 bytes [2.00 TB] Sector Sizes: 512 bytes logical, 4096 bytes physical Rotation Rate: 5400 rpm Device is: In smartctl database 7.3/5319 ATA Version is: ACS-2 (minor revision not indicated) SATA Version is: SATA 3.0, 6.0 Gb/s (current: 3.0 Gb/s) Local Time is: Fri Jul 7 04:43:34 2023 PDT SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability. SMART support is: Enabled === START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION === SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED General SMART Values: Offline data collection status: (0x82) Offline data collection activity was completed without error. Auto Offline Data Collection: Enabled. Self-test execution status: ( 0) The previous self-test routine completed without error or no self-test has ever been run. Total time to complete Offline data collection: (27360) seconds. Offline data collection capabilities: (0x7b) SMART execute Offline immediate. Auto Offline data collection on/off support. Suspend Offline collection upon new command. Offline surface scan supported. Self-test supported. Conveyance Self-test supported. Selective Self-test supported. SMART capabilities: (0x0003) Saves SMART data before entering power-saving mode. Supports SMART auto save timer. Error logging capability: (0x01) Error logging supported. General Purpose Logging supported. Short self-test routine recommended polling time: ( 2) minutes. Extended self-test routine recommended polling time: ( 276) minutes. Conveyance self-test routine recommended polling time: ( 5) minutes. SCT capabilities: (0x7035) SCT Status supported. SCT Feature Control supported. SCT Data Table supported. SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 16 Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds: ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME FLAG VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE UPDATED WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE 1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate 0x002f 200 200 051 Pre-fail Always - 0 3 Spin_Up_Time 0x0027 177 173 021 Pre-fail Always - 4141 4 Start_Stop_Count 0x0032 096 096 000 Old_age Always - 4416 5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct 0x0033 200 200 140 Pre-fail Always - 0 7 Seek_Error_Rate 0x002e 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0 9 Power_On_Hours 0x0032 089 089 000 Old_age Always - 8602 10 Spin_Retry_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0 11 Calibration_Retry_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0 12 Power_Cycle_Count 0x0032 097 097 000 Old_age Always - 3624 192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 100 193 Load_Cycle_Count 0x0032 088 088 000 Old_age Always - 338427 194 Temperature_Celsius 0x0022 119 104 000 Old_age Always - 28 196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0 197 Current_Pending_Sector 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0 198 Offline_Uncorrectable 0x0030 200 200 000 Old_age Offline - 0 199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0 200 Multi_Zone_Error_Rate 0x0008 200 200 000 Old_age Offline - 0 SMART Error Log Version: 1 No Errors Logged SMART Self-test log structure revision number 1 Num Test_Description Status Remaining LifeTime(hours) LBA_of_first_error # 1 Short offline Completed without error 00% 8602 - SMART Selective self-test log data structure revision number 1 SPAN MIN_LBA MAX_LBA CURRENT_TEST_STATUS 1 0 0 Not_testing 2 0 0 Not_testing 3 0 0 Not_testing 4 0 0 Not_testing 5 0 0 Not_testing Selective self-test flags (0x0): After scanning selected spans, do NOT read-scan remainder of disk. If Selective self-test is pending on power-up, resume after 0 minute delay.
Here is a related question - when I was writing random or zeros to the raw device (/dev/sda) I was getting speeds of 1.7 or so mb / s now I am getting 25 mb/s writing to a file in the partition.
Why the difference?
Have you tried it with a different enclosure or directly connected to your PC? My last two “faulty” HDDs actually just had a faulty controller in the enclosure. Drives were fine.
This enclosure was working up till when I stopped a dd to try something faster.
Try in another computer if you have one. The fact dd is limiting you to 5GB though doesn’t sound good, not going to lie.
I do not have another available, nor do I have an internal SATA slot available.
Have you tried looking at the disk with gparted?
Created a 2tb partition with gparted now writing to failure with dd. Up to 41gb so far.
Sounds like that drive is gone. I’m betting it has dead blocks/sectors
Now the 2TB drive has received 88GB so far - the write continues.
Keep us posted.
The DD continues now at 170Gb of 1024 - a long way to go… 25mb / s
That’s awesome, sounds like hearted may have saved your drive useability.
Well that is a good sign then. You have definitely broken that 5gb issue. Did you happen to notice if there was. Hidden petition on there?
I did not see any. Gparted would have shown them to me, right?
Kinda depends on the software used to format the drive originally iirc
